Monday, July 10, 2006

An Open Letter to the Editors of ETHICAL CORPORATION magazine on their Leader regarding Divestment Campaigns and Darfur/ Sudan

The following Letter to the Editor was sent to the Editors but, as they have not published it, I include it here as an open letter:

Sirs/Mesdames

As you correctly point out, it is fairly clear to anyone even remotely familiar with the situation in Sudan that the current sort of patchy and half-hearted divestment campaign in Sudan is programmed not to work.

Indeed any divestment campaign, if it is to work, must be based on a proper and thorough analysis of the financial "heart and lungs" of the system in question. In the case of Sudan, the lungs may be said to be the Arab world, but the financial heart and blood is provided by China.

So if a divestment campaign is to be effective in Sudan, it has to hurt at the place from which the money is coming into Sudan. And that is principally China. Since that is an empire run by the Communist elite, only wholesale disinvestment from China is going to stop that oligopoly from investing in Sudan.

The question is: do we want merely to join those who make polite noises and token gestures, or are we actually prepared to do what it will apparently take to stop genocide in Sudan?

Yours faithfully

Prabhu Guptara
Weinfelden, Switzerland Sphere: Related Content

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